CORRUPTION IN UNIFORM: THE MAYOR

CORRUPTION IN UNIFORM: THE MAYOR; GIULIANI PROMISES FIGHT TO ROOT OUT POLICE CORRUPTION

By ALISON MITCHELL

Published: July 8, 1994

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani yesterday promised a thoroughgoing effort to root out corruption in the New York City Police Department. But he stopped well short of endorsing a special panel's call for creation of a permanent, independent Police Commission with broad powers to investigate the nation's largest police force.

Mr. Giuliani, a former prosecutor who has made the reduction of crime the centerpiece of his mayoralty, spoke after the Mollen Commission formally released the results of a two-year study of the Police Department -- a report that painted a devastating account of corrupt networks of rogue officers and of a police culture that "exalts loyalty over integrity."

The release of the commission's final report leaves Mr. Giuliani with the critical question of how to police the police at a time when he has been expanding the uniformed officer's mission to the kind of street arrests of drug dealers that were abandoned in the wake of the city's last police corruption scandals of the 1970's.

Now, the Mayor faces the delicate task of balancing the aims of the Mollen Commission with the political demands of a strong police union that rallied around him during the election campaign and a Police Commissioner who opposes an outside watchdog agency with subpoena power.

In recommending creation of an independent five-member panel, the Mollen Commission said the recurring 20-year cycle of police corruption had demonstrated that only independent oversight would "compel the department to accomplish what it naturally wants to avoid: uncovering corruption in its own ranks."

"When it comes to internal policing, there's a problem," Milton Mollen, a former deputy mayor who was the commission chairman, said at a news conference yesterday. "We think that they need a prod."

Mr. Giuliani said he agreed with the commission that the police need an outside monitor, but he left unclear what kind. In recent months, he has indicated that he leans toward giving the outside monitoring powers to the city's Department of Investigation, which is headed by his close associate, Howard Wilson, who served under him when he was the United States Attorney in Manhattan.

At another news conference, with members of the Mollen Commission and with Police Commissioner William J. Bratton at his side, Mr. Giuliani said only that he would consider the recommendation for an independent Police Commission. "I have an open mind on it," he said, "and I'm not going to say no to it, and it's something that's worth a great deal of consideration." He added that he would take time "to analyze what the district attorneys have to say about this, some of the other people in the law-enforcement community."

The decision on how to respond to police corruption would be a critical one for any mayor: David N. Dinkins named the Mollen panel in 1992 after Michael Dowd, then an officer in the crime-ridden East New York section of Brooklyn, was arrested on drug charges by the Suffolk County police.

But the issue is particularly important for Mr. Giuliani because he has protected the Police Department from budget cuts and deliberately linked the success of his mayoralty to the performance of the force. Recently he said the city's "future to a very large extent as a society" depended on New York's becoming safer. A Broader Context

He has stressed in the past that a society that expects police officers to put themselves in danger needs to support them. And yesterday, even as he praised the Mollen panel for documenting "a very important problem that the city must address," Mr. Giuliani sought to put police corruption in a broader context. He said it was "a part, not the only example, of corruption that exists in the government of New York City, the politics of New York City or the way in which we conduct business in New York City."

In the midst of the news conference on corruption, the Mayor called forward and introduced a probationary police officer, Donny Brown, who, while off duty, helped pursue a suspect Wednesday night who had hijacked a car and held up the Whitestone Bridge tollbooth. Mr. Giuliani cited him as a model officer.

Mr. Giuliani said yesterday, as he has in the past, that he would personally favor recreating the Office of Special State Prosecutor, to investigate corrupt officers. Such an office was formed after the corruption scandals of the early 1970's and was disbanded by Gov. Mario M. Cuomo in 1990 on the ground of inefficiency.

Mr. Giuliani said that while he would argue for the office, he considered it "unrealistic" to think Albany would approve it, requiring him to turn to another option.

As a result, he has spoken occasionally about the possibility of using the Investigation Department to be the main outside monitor. Aides have said the attraction of the approach is that it does not single out the police as a department more deserving of scrutiny than other agencies. 'A Certain Symmetry'

Late last year when he appointed Mr. Wilson, Mr. Giuliani said: "Since the Commissioner of Investigation is responsible for corruption throughout city government, there's a certain symmetry in doing this. What you're saying is that police officers are not subject to any more or less scrutiny than anyone else."